This semester, you'll see four female writers contributing regularly to this opinions page - Maha Atal '08, Laura Martin '06, Courtney Jenkins '07 and myself. That's four writers out of a current stable of 16 regular columnists. Last semester, the figure was the same. Four women -Marjon Carlos '05, Julia Gregoire '05, Samantha Plesser '05 and myself - were opinion writers.
But don't think that Herald Opinions Editors Te-Ping Chen '07 and Ari Savitzky '06 are rabid antifeminists who take pleasure in rejecting women from the op-ed page. Before I became a Herald columnist, I too was a member of The Herald's editorial staff, where I worked with Chen and Savitzky on selecting columnists for the Spring 2005 semester. We postered campus widely in December 2004, inviting all students to apply for columnist slots. But when we reviewed the completed applications over winter break, we found that less than 20 percent had been submitted by women. Back on campus, our attempts to recruit female columnists from the ranks of our friends and acquaintances were foiled. "I don't think I could think of things to write," we heard from our dynamic and brilliant female classmates, or, "I don't know. ... I'll think about it."
Sadly, it isn't just at Brown that you might be tricked into thinking that women have no opinions. Last March, a debate erupted in the national media about why there aren't more women represented on the op-ed pages of the United States' most influential newspapers, such as the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. These are the forums that shape our mainstream intellectual debate on topics such as the war in Iraq, domestic social welfare programs and responses to Hurricane Katrina - issues that affect women as much as they affect men, in some cases more. Yet with some notable exceptions - Maureen Dowd and Anne Applebaum spring to mind - women are regularly absent from these exchanges.
Two main theories have surfaced attempting to explain why. The first - promoted by Dowd in a column last March - is what I think of as the Lawrence Summers axiom. It states that whether by nature or nurture (who knows, really?), women just aren't cut out for opinion writing. We're afraid to go out on a limb with an untested idea, we can't take the inevitable heat of hate mail, and, after all, women would always rather reconcile than argue. That's why if we ruled the world, there'd be no wars. ... Right?
The second theory lays the blame solely on either willfully sexist or haplessly blind male editors. These guys fail to take notice of brilliant female writers around them such as Barabara Ehrenreich, Katha Pollit and Dalia Lithwick, who write regularly for lefty publications like Slate and the Nation but say they've never received regular job offers from the big name dailies.
There's no question that on the national stage, opinionated women writers are being overlooked, and there are undoubtedly male editors out there who rely a bit too heavily on the Old Boys network as they fill their publications' pages. I've even been lucky enough to work with men like that at some of my internships. But here at Brown, where a bright-eyed generation of egalitarian editors has honestly tried to recruit women columnists, what could be holding us back? Could the lack of women columnists have something to do with the lack of women in so many other fields, most notably electoral politics?
It seems that the lack of women role models not only on national opinions pages, but also in the political realm that columnists cover, has deeply affected young women's ambitions. Our pop culture image of a female newspaper columnist is of the sex and relationship variety: think of the cute musings of Carrie Bradshaw on "Sex and the City." And when only 69 of 435 members of the House of Representatives are women, and there are just 14 female senators out of 100, we cannot yet say that women are completely integrated into our nation's political life.
To many U.S. citizens of all ages, the juxtaposition of "women" and "politics" - particularly if the loaded term "feminism" is added - calls to mind the abortion rights advocacy of groups such as the National Organization of Women and NARAL Pro-Choice America. While these organizations do important work in protecting our bodily rights, their public pronouncements, in which they claim to speak for the "feminist majority," are usually limited to concerns about reproductive rights. This ghettoizes women's political groups, limits the number of U.S. citizens who feel comfortable identifying as feminists, and wastes the opportunities these organizations have to speak from a public pulpit about the many issues that matter to U.S. women, such as affordable housing, health care, job opportunities and access to child care.
Our mothers' generation had its feminist battles, and we will have ours. We'll have to broaden the issues and people involved in the feminist movement and pull more women into electoral politics at the local, state and national levels. Aspiring journalists like myself will need to observe these changes, calling attention to successes and using convincing prose to buoy the effort.
We don't need college degrees to start this process. It begins here and now at Brown as we organize to support local candidates for public office, volunteer at schools and hospitals and even write columns for The Brown Daily Herald.
I know that the amazing women of Brown are chock full of thoughtful, analytical, angry, infuriating opinions. And I can't wait to hear them.
Dana Goldstein '06 wears the pants.
